A highly successful property finance company has now launched its own bridging packager, due to the increasing client need for short term finance.

Voltaire Financial, which launched three years ago, traditionally looks at more higher-end residential finance deals in the £5 million to £35 million bracket. However, it started brokering bridging finance 18 months ago and has since established strong relationships with many of the key bridging lenders in the industry.

As a result of its growing success within bridging, the team decided to launch Voltaire Bridging. Voltaire Bridging launched this week,Tuesday, and was created to provide customers and introducer relationships with a dedicated bridging finance offering.

Andrew Hosford, Director of Voltaire Financial, has now been installed as Head of Bridging at Voltaire Bridging. He told B&C Distributor: “We decided to make a move into the bridging space in line with our on growth and how sought after the products are in light of how versatile and flexible the financial options are.

“With borrowers increasingly finding it hard to source and attain finance, we have established a number of market-leading relationships with the most entrepreneurial and best-capitalised bridging lenders.

“We’re keen to grow our business organically and expand our relationship with brokers within the market and those new to bridging.”

Voltaire’s wide network means that it has a number of exclusive arrangements with lenders within the market, including one lender which can facilitate funding for up to £100 to £200 million. Voltaire Bridging will look at bridging deals from £250,000.

The Mayfair-based brokerage has six members of full-time staff and three consultants, which introduce new business to the company.

Some of the deals which Voltaire has completed to date include:

-    £2.4 million to refinance existing debt secured against a mixed-use portfolio of nationwide assets;
-    £2.2 million development facility to help construct five flats; and
-    £3.2 million to assist with the acquisition of a secondary office investment asset in the South East.

A recent unusual deal to highlight involved the completion of a £2.8 million tailored bridging product, an unusual war chest facility and site loan including equity extraction. An incumbent lender was urgently seeking a client to repay its £900,000 loan. The client owned a site in South East London, which had a planning content in place for nine residential units. He had managed to secure an option agreement to acquire the adjacent sites subject to planning. Voltaire arranged a bridging lender to provide a bespoke short term facility to refinance the existing lender and allow the client to complete the planning process associated with the adjacent sires. Using the site with planning as security a further £1.9 million was lent over and above the £900,000 required to repay the existing lender. This surplus acts as a war chest facility, giving the client flexibility to draw down and repay funds as required, resulting in the ability to act as a cash buyer as separate opportunities arise.

Andrew said that some of the many bridging deals in its pipeline currently involve deals in London and around the M25 ring, and large-schemes in the North and student accommodation propositions.